Stellaris

So usually my choices of ethics are driven by roleplaying concerns and I don't worry about balance.

But I must say that I've been playing a fanatic xenophile in my last game and I am really seeing its advantages... in the past, the squishier ethics weren't super powerful imho. Now f xenophile gives you a 50% reduction in diplomatic upkeep which is extremely helpful... you can form agreements, federations, etc willy nilly and really diplomatically accomplish exactly what you like without sucking away your ability to claim territory and other empire's systems.

Moreover, now immigration, while it can create some unhappy population, is incredibly useful. The December economy changes now prioritize population and citizens economically, and being able to bring in pops of other species even if it creates a little bit of unrest is well worth it for the population bonuses. I actively create migration agreements now because more people means more workers means more production means more power in a very direct fashion now.

So beyond being a better, more interesting economy model I think the big changes are having really good downstream effects. I could imagine that slaving empires now make a lot of economic sense too for exactly these increased population=increased production reasons (I don't personally play slavers, a tad too icky even in fantasy mode for me).

I just saw a video of the new Stellaris console edition. I'm sure they will fix it but I'm a little shocked at how behind the PC version patchwise they are. Maybe a year?

yea its whatever version was the current one when they started developing the console version basically. not sure what kinda timeline theyre working on for getting updates out, but having never played any other version its quite fun. i guess theyve been changing all kinds of stuff.

Thankfully, as I think you'll see if you go back in this thread, you'll see I've thought it was pretty playable for the last year at least. I think it's better now but it's very baseline playable in the version you're playing.

I've hit a point now where I'm way more powerful than everyone else and the full map is explored, but nothing much seems to be happening and I'm no where near any victory conditions. I'm just kinda back filling colonies and making numbers go up. Presumably something will happen at some point, or I'll get bored and start a big war or something (though I'm currently a pacifist fanatic xenophile, so that would be a hard shift in our gross mushroom societies traditional values).

If you're near the end game, shit will go down soon. There's an endgame crisis in Stellaris.

That said, AI has always been a significant negative in this game

I don't know what qualifies as being near the end game, like I said I'm not anywhere near the victory conditions.

Also, having some context now, the economy changes your talking about in the last couple pages sound pretty intense/interesting.

Stellaris is now $9 in the latest Humble strategy bundle, along with some other games. I grabbed it, we shall see if it gets its hooks in.


edit- Loaded it up.... yeah, I can see a lot of time getting lost in here. They throw more shit at you than 5 minutes in a town in Skyrim.

Today I learned that I was supposed to have been building generator units in my generator districts. :/

I've got 4 hours in so far, and it's great. I have yet to come anywhere close to winning a fight against enemy ships.

Which version are you playing? There are no generator units anymore in the updated PC build, just generator districts. If you build the energy districts, the lower class will staff them as you get enough lower class to fill all the jobs. Every energy technician job will generate raw energy resources.

District, I guess. I'm on PC, latest build from Steam, base game only. You have to click these little squares to actually build additional units, which I don't think the tutorial made clear.

Don't forget you need to build an Administrative Center (or whatever the block on the far left is called) every once in a while, or the citizens will start complaining about insufficient housing. You can fix that problem with luxury housing too, but I don't usually build that unless I've used up all the plain vanilla (admin, energy, minerals, food) squares.

Regular districts also supply a little bit of housing as well, so if you're building a lot of resource generating districts on your planet you'll be less pressed for housing until later in the game.

btw, dunno if anyone is in the market, but there's a big paradox sale at its site for DLC, you can get steam keys too.

Haven't been back to this in a while... my video gaming has been limited to a few rounds of Apex Legends. Trying to work my way through a new card game design.